Ernest looked at Sherm and Sherm looked at Carol, and Carol saw something out of the window that interested him.

At length, Ernest, getting no a.s.sistance from the others, blurted out:

"One's enough for me. What do you say, boys?"

Carol and Sherm nodded.

"One apiece--my, this looks exciting. Somebody is to be very specially honored I see. It is too late to make the kind the little girls have, but you might buy some tiny baskets--I'd love to trim them up for you.

Got any money, boys?"

An exhaustive search of trousers' pockets revealed a combined capital of twenty-five cents. The boys asked anxiously if it were enough.

"Yes, for three. Are you getting this for Chicken Little, Ernest?"

Ernest got red and looked uncomfortable.

"Never mind--I didn't mean to be prying--only I wish you big boys would hang some for the little girls--it would please them to death. If you don't mind my having a part in this. I'd like to put in a little money, too. Let me put in another quarter and I'll do the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and you boys can repay me by hanging a basket to each of the little girls as well as to your own friends."

The bargain was speedily struck and the boys hurried off downtown for the baskets and the ribbon for the tiny bows Marian had decided should adorn them.

They came back so quickly, it made Marian breathless to think of the pace they must have gone. Carol didn't come straight either. He slipped round by home to beg some blossoms from his mother's house plants. Not finding her, he promptly helped himself to all her most cherished blooms to her surprise and wrath when she discovered her loss.

Marian filled in with her own flowers and the boys hung round admiring, waiting upon her awkwardly and watching every move she made with the baskets.

"Is it all right?" she asked, holding up the first, filled with scarlet geraniums.

"Gee, that's a dandy!" Ernest approved.

"Say, I'd like to have that one," said Sherm.

"I like blue better anyway--make mine blue, will you, Marian?" Ernest added.

Marian thought of Katy's scarlet and white offering to be laid at Ernest's shrine and smiled.

"Yellow for me, please," put in Carol. "Yellow's so kind of cheerful--like sunshine or gold--I always liked dandelions only they're such a pest."

The little girls had been too happily full of their own plans to wonder whether they would get any baskets in return. But they came back that evening from the delightfully exciting task of hanging their fragrant gifts to find that friends and playmates had been equally mindful of them.

Katy had the most--seven. Jane and Gertie had each five. One of Jane's was a marvellous creation so heavy that she promptly investigated what lay beneath the flowers, finding a fat little box of candy hidden away.

Another was a crude little pasteboard affair fairly overflowing with dainty spring beauties, and this, too, contained an offering in the shape of a jolly little homemade whistle. Still another had scarlet bows.

Katy wondered and wondered who sent her a similar basket with golden yellow bows on each side of the handle.

"I'm sure I heard Ernest and Sherm outside our gate. I just know Ernest gave me that," she confided to Gertie.

Gertie's biggest basket had blue bows and Gertie loved blue.

Marian never knew where the mates to the blue and yellow and red baskets found a lodging place. She did not inquire. But when she saw Chicken Little's candy she promptly exclaimed "d.i.c.k Harding!"

"I just know it was," replied Chicken Little.

CHAPTER XV

THUNDER AND GOOSEBERRY BUSHES

May seemed to have traded places with April that year for it was a month of many showers. Poor Marian got tired of watching the pelting rain and Mrs. Morton complained that it was simply impossible to clean house as the sunniest day was liable to end in a downpour.

Dr. Morton's letters from the west full of glowing accounts of the sunshine in Kansas and Colorado seemed almost irritating in their contrast. Alice, too, wrote of lovely spring weather, declaring it had been almost hot some days.

The children did not mind the rain--they merely objected to being shut in on account of it. Chicken Little told d.i.c.k a long tale of woe one evening when he came up to inquire about Marian and get the latest news of Alice.

"Fine weather for ducks and frogs, Chicken Little. Just try standing in the edge of a puddle--saying croak, croak and see if you don't like it.

I'll have to give you a few swimming lessons," he consoled her teasingly.

"Don't put any such nonsense into her head, d.i.c.k. She is a born duck now and is forever teasing to go wading," Mrs. Morton had replied.

"Why we'll have to call you Ducky Daddles instead of Chicken Little,"

said d.i.c.k.

Mrs. Morton repeated the incident to Mrs. Halford the following day.

"Children certainly do have the craziest notions. Chicken Little has been fretting all spring to go out in the rain. I suspect several slight colds she has had are due to experiments of that kind." Mrs. Morton looked both amused and annoyed.

"Yes, Katy and Gertie have had the same craze--I guess it's natural. I remember the spring rains used to have the same attraction for me when I was a child. My father used to say children should be born web-footed--they love water so. Puddles do look tempting. I think the thing that cured me was one of those dashing spring showers that bring the earthworms out. Some kind child made me believe they rained down. I loathed the slimy things. You couldn't get me out doors, if it so much as looked like rain, for weeks after. I kept imagining the crawly things dropping down on my hair and face. Ugh! I remember just how I felt even yet."

"That might be a good way to cure our would-be ducklings."

"No, I don't think so--fear is never the best way to cure a child, and I like my girls to love rain as well as shine. But I've been wondering if it might not be a good idea to let them go out once in a good hard thunder shower just to get it out of their systems--though, of course, there would be fear in that, too."

Some two weeks after this conversation between the mothers, Chicken Little was spending Sat.u.r.day morning at the Halfords'. The children were playing keep house out under the gooseberry bushes. The bushes were very old and tall. Mr. Halford kept them trimmed up underneath, forming leafy aisles about three feet high. Here the little girls delighted to set up their doll goods in the late spring and early summer.

They had everything arranged to their taste on this particular morning.

They had settled down in charge of a most extensive dolls' hospital, using the aisles between the rows of bushes for wards and the green gooseberries for pills--a most convenient arrangement because the supply of medicine never gave out. But, alas, before Dr. Katy had time to inspect a single ward, big drops began to patter down, and Gertie's cherished Minnie, suffering from a terrible attack of pneumonia, was well sprinkled before her anxious mother could remove her to a sheltered spot. The sprinkle was but the beginning of a smart shower that sent the children scurrying to the house with their arms filled with a jumble of patients and bedding. Gertie regarded them dumped in a heap on the kitchen floor, ruefully.

"Minnie'll take an awful cold and die I just know, and my new pink silk quilt got wet and the pink's run into the white!"

"I think it's horrid of it to rain just as we got everything fixed,"

added Katy.

"I wish we could stay out in it," said Chicken Little, staring out the window at the rain falling ker-splash on the brick walk outside.

"Wouldn't it be fun!" Katy exclaimed enthusiastically. "See what big drops--I most believe I could catch some in my hands. Oh, I wonder if Mother would let us go out--I'm going to ask her."

Mrs. Halford meditated a moment over the request, then putting by her sewing went to the window to take a look at the clouds.